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Meal Planning: Make a Weekly Routine

Hey there! I'm Jessica. I think that motherhood should be savored, like a good piece of chocolate. But sometimes it feels like more duty than delight. Am I right? I'm working to change that. Read more about me here and this blog here.

You know I love me a good menu plan. I’ve been faithfully tacking a meal calendar to my fridge since 1994. Oh my! That dates me, don’t it?

For the last year or so, I’ve been able to consistently keep my freezer full of pre-prepped meals. And that, my friends, has been a huge help to my life as MOM. But, a full freezer does not a menu plan make.

I still have to decide on the order of meals as well as remember to thaw them. And often, I’m just pulling a meal component out of the freezer, like taco meat or marinated chicken. There are still some other players to complement the star of the show.

The Old Fashioned Way

This month I went back to Gramma’s way of planning meals. I also call it the 1950’s way of meal planning. Each day of the week gets its own assignment. Back in Gramma’s days, it might have been pot roast or meatloaf instead of shredded beef enchiladas, but the method still works.

As school gets underway, I find that I need a little jump start on routines, so I’ve assigned each night a theme to its menu to make menu planning easier and to add a steady rhythm to our week.

And, no, I don’t think it’s going to be boring, because there is so much variation in each of those categories. And ya know, sometimes predictability is a good thing, it’s called tradition. Either way, it’s going to be a tasty week!

We’ve been doing the assigned breakfast for a couple of years now thanks to your advice. This year I started doing the same with chores. Emily went to bed tonight reminding me that tomorrow was the day to clean the bathrooms. Your dinner meal plan looks wonderful!

Because I like to try new recipes, especially when I want to take advantage of some special sale, I instituted a night that was “hubby’s choice”. He would get so sad when we would go for long periods of time without going back to old standards he loved, like crock pot roast or enchiladas. Now they are one of his favorite nights!

That’s a really good idea — giving each day its own theme. I might have to give it a try one of these weeks. You could add variety to that by also making each day a certain ethnicity — Mexican, Italian, French, Chinese, English, Irish, German… Hmm…theme days. This sounds fun.

@cherie, I make so many things homemade, but enchilada sauce is one that I haven’t yet found success in. We only like one kind, though, Las Palmas. I tried homemade when we lived in Kansas and couldn’t get Las Palmas for a time. But, now it’s back to our old standby.

I do this, too with two changes. Thursday night is leftover night to make sure we use up the bits and pieces from the week. Saturday and Sunday nights my dh cooks. I use leftovers from his cooking as part of the weekday dinner menu. Often he’ll cook a meatloaf that can serve as meat for a meal during the week.

Once again you saved me! I went on your sight today to search around for 2 things….how to homeschool preschoolers, and your weekly meal list. And what do I find – your first page and second page is EXACTLY what I needed. Thank you Jessica for everything you do – for us, for your family. You are truly an inspiration.

That is a really good idea! I always plan menus 2 weeks at a time but there is no pattern to them and I find myself struggling to think of meals that would definitely help to have a theme in place for each day!!

I think haveing little kids who are so picky – makes the Grandma way of planning meals so much easier. They WANT spaghetti all the time, and pizza, and nachos/quesadilla’s…so when I’m doing my month long grocery shopping list and planning it all out – it really makes it easy to just asign nights whatever particular food and I can make the shopping list around that. I add a crock-pot meal in each week right now, and that allows me to have an evening off – so that I can go have some Me time, if it works out right with hubby’s schedule. And if Hubby happens to work late, I scrap whatever meal I had planned for that night and serve breakfast to the kids. It makes it easier to scrap it, if I have already precooked my hamburger meat, or have that chicken already shredded and stored in 1 lb bags in the freezer! If I end up making the casserol with chicken, and he doesn’t come home – I can skip cooking it that night, and cook it the next!

that is exactly how I mealplan…
I have nights… but a two week rotation… and leave room for leftovers (but we only have one child). Every 3rd day is leftovers unless it’s Sunday, then it’s pushed a day.

I have cookbooks and books on nutrition/meal planning from the 1940-‘s & 50’s. They ROCK! And they make sense even now…

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